Halloween
The night he came home!
Halloween (1978)
Budget
$325 000
Revenue
$70 260 597
Director
Scenario
Composer
Producer
Actors
Donald Pleasence
Loomis
Jamie Lee Curtis
Laurie
Nancy Kyes
Annie
P.J. Soles
Lynda
Charles Cyphers
Brackett
Kyle Richards
Lindsey
Brian Andrews
Tommy
John Michael Graham
Bob
Short description
On Halloween night in 1963, a six-year-old boy named Michael Myers stabs his sister to death in their home in Haddonfield, Illinois. He is committed to a psychiatric hospital, where his psychiatrist, Sam Loomis, comes to believe the boy embodies pure evil. Fifteen years later, on the eve of Halloween, Michael escapes and heads back to Haddonfield, where teenager Laurie Strode and her friends are going about their ordinary plans, unaware that he is returning to the town where he began.
John Carpenter directed and co-wrote the film with Debra Hill, who also produced alongside Moustapha Akkad. It was Carpenter's third feature as director, following Assault on Precinct 13 in 1976 and preceding the television film Someone's Watching Me! the same year. Donald Pleasence plays Loomis, while Jamie Lee Curtis, in an early screen role, plays Laurie, supported by Nancy Kyes, P.J. Soles, Charles Cyphers and Kyle Richards among a credited cast of 29.
Released in October 1978 and running 91 minutes, the film took about 70 million dollars worldwide against a small independent budget, a return that made it a commercial success. Critics rated it 9 out of 10 across 92 reviews, and on TMDB it holds 7.6 out of 10 from more than 6,300 ratings, while on IMDb it stands at 5.2 from 63 votes.
What's left behind the scenes
- The scene of Judith's murder was filmed late at night, so Will Sandin could not stay on set until the end of the episode. In the scene where Myers stabs his sister with a knife, the knife is held by Debra Hill's hand.
- Dennis Quaid was invited to play the role of Bob, Lynda's boyfriend, and he was dating P. J. Soles at the time (they married the same year), but Quaid declined the role due to his commitments.
- Carpenter was inspired to create the character of Michael Myers by the android from 'Westworld' (1973), played by Yul Brynner.
- The film is set in autumn, but filming took place in spring. To save money, the crew painted paper leaves, then collected and reused them for shooting.
- As Jamie Lee Curtis recalled, to ensure her character's emotions aligned with the director's vision, Carpenter devised a "fear meter": the director would call out a level, and the actress would accordingly portray different emotions. According to Curtis, the instructions were along the lines of "It'll be a 7 here, a 6 here, and somewhere around 9 and a half in the scene we're shooting tonight."
- The film's small budget made it impossible to attract major actors, so up-and-coming actors such as Jamie Lee Curtis were cast in some roles. The actors' fees were very modest: Donald Pleasence received the most ($20,000), Jamie Lee Curtis received $8,000, and Nick Castle, who played Myers, filmed for only $25 a day.
- According to Debra Hill, one of the reasons Jamie Lee Curtis was cast was because she was the daughter of Janet Leigh, the star of "Psycho": this was intended to give the film additional publicity. For Curtis, the role of Laurie was her film debut. Before that, she had only appeared in television series.
- Myers's iconic mask has its own story. It was made from a Halloween Captain Kirk mask (the hero of the science fiction series 'Star Trek'; 1966—1969) costing about a dollar, which was, in turn, modeled after William Shatner, who played Kirk. The purchased mask had its eyebrows removed, the eye sockets widened, and it was painted white. This version, due to its emotionlessness, appealed more to the creators than the smiling clown mask.
- Nancy Kyes, then a relatively unknown actress (credited as Nancy Loomis in Carpenter's film), played Laurie's friend Annie Brackett. Kyes was already known to Carpenter, having appeared in "Assault on Precinct 13". Additionally, at the time of filming "Halloween", she was dating Tommy Lee Wallace, the film's artist and editor.
- Ten-year-old actress Kyle Richards, who played Lindsey Wallace, was the younger sister of Kim Richards, who played Katy in "Assault on Precinct 13".
- Donald Pleasence was initially unenthusiastic about the offer to play Dr. Sam Loomis, but his daughter, after watching "Assault on Precinct 13", convinced him to work with Carpenter.
- The people in the house of Jamie Lee Curtis's character are enjoying a screening of the 1951 film 'The Thing'. John Carpenter would later direct a remake of this film.
- The film was shot in 20 days.
- Carpenter's first choice for the role of Laurie Stroud was Ann Lockhart, and the film's original title was 'The Babysitter Murders'.
- The actors wore their own clothes in the film, as there was no money for a professional costume designer.
- The town of Smith's Grove (in Illinois) mentioned in the film is a real place with a population of around 600 people. It is located 15 miles from Bowling Green, John Carpenter's hometown. Despite the film being set in Illinois, all the license plates visible in the shots are Californian. Palm trees, which do not grow in Illinois, also appear in the film.
- The role of Michael Myers (credited as “The Shape”) was played by six different people.
- The name of the character 'Sam Loomis' is also not accidental – a character with the same name appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's famous film 'Psycho'.
- John Carpenter originally wanted to cast Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing in the role of the doctor, but they declined.
- Daniel Gonzalez, a London resident who committed several murders, compared them to the murders in "Halloween" after his arrest.
- The full version of the film has a runtime of 101 minutes.
- The character Tommie Doyle's name is taken from Alfred Hitchcock's classic film "Rear Window," and the nurse Marion Chambers' name is a combination of the first and last names of two characters from "Psycho." Finally, Sheriff Lee Brackett (Annie's father) was named after screenwriter Lee Brackett, who worked with Howard Hawks on the 1959 film "Rio Bravo," which influenced "Assault on Precinct 13."
- If you look closely at the scene where Laurie notices a figure near the bush, you can see smoke – this was smoke from John Carpenter's cigarette that accidentally got into the frame.
- Carpenter recorded the film's music with his friends in 4 days.
- The television broadcast rights for the film were sold to NBC for $4,000,000. In 1980, NBC released a television version of the film, which, unlike the original, ran for 101 minutes. Specifically for it, during the work on "Halloween II", Carpenter and Hill, with the original cast, filmed four additional scenes.
- Christopher Lee, who refused to star in the film due to the small fee, later said that it was his biggest mistake of his career.
- Much later, Carpenter and Hill, recalling all the performers who played Michael, could not remember who specifically played him in the final shot, when his body lies on the ground.
- In 2006, the Library of Congress added "Halloween" to the National Film Registry as a film "of cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance."
- Following the success of "Halloween" in the 1980s and 1990s, other films appeared based on the story of a maniac pursuing teenagers. Some of them, such as "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street", subsequently spawned film series. Carpenter himself later said that he "didn't even realize the effect [the film] would have. This film started a trend that by the late eighties made horror films unpopular."
- All the female characters in the film are high school students. However, of the actresses involved in the film, only Jamie Lee Curtis roughly matched the appropriate school age.
- The final scene filmed was the murder of Judith Myers. An abandoned house in South Pasadena, owned by a church, was used as the Myers house. To film the scene of Judith's murder, the film crew furnished the house and ran electricity to it.
- The film is filled with numerous hidden references and jokes. For example, the town was named Haddonfield after the place in New Jersey where Debra Hill went to school. Laurie Stroud is actually the name of John Carpenter's first girlfriend. Michael Myers was named after the British distributor of John Carpenter's 'Assault on Precinct 13' (1976).
- The 'Bowling Green Philharmonic Orchestra' mentioned in the credits does not exist.
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